Friday: Caldo Verde

 

Caldo verde, made with lamb's quarters.

"Caldo verde" is a Goan, Portuguese-influenced dish, which calls for kale along with the potatoes, but here we substituted lamb's quarters instead.  You basically simmer the vegetables together for a long time and then puree - the only seasoning is onion and a huge amount of garlic.  It had a very thick, viscous texture because of the starch of the new potatoes.

We also made fresh roti - an unleavened flat bread, cooked on a cast-iron skillet - as an accompaniment.

Monday:

Potatoes with whole spices and sesame seeds and mung dal.

You might be saying, "But, faithful bloggers! Doesn't mung dal look more like this?" Well, on our recent Jackson Heights shopping spree we picked up this pack of mung dal, which was missing its green hulls and which had a brighter yellow color overall. To be honest we have not been able to sort out what's going on there, but they are definitely skinless, and maybe something has been done to change the color (like a light roasting). Regardless, they have a slightly less distinctive but definitely still tasty flavor, they're a bit quicker-cooking, and they have a creamy texture since they're lacking their skins.

Sunday dinner: The whole fish, and nothing but the fish

Whole roasted Boston mackerel and roasted purple potatoes with mixed greens salad.

This was our very first experience roasting a fish whole.  It came about somewhat by accident, since the fishmonger didn't have enough mackerel fillets for our full order, and instead threw in two small whole fish.  The fish come cleaned and gutted, so all we had to do was rub them with a little oil, season them by stuffing with a couple garlic cloves, and then roast them over a bed of thinly sliced onions and potatoes.  The difficult part was knowing when the fish were done: a fillet has a relatively uniform thickness, so you can usually count on the whole thing being done if one part flakes nicely.  Whole fishes, however, have a lot more variation, so even if one part seemed well cooked, we were still concerned that thicker areas remained too translucent.  Like all cooking, this is obviously a learning process, but now we know that we can do it.  (And whole fish does, often, taste better than fillets.)

We wanted to share with you a picture of our prepped roasting tray complete with mackerel and potato slices, but we realized the image might be a bit graphic for our more sensitive, veggie-oriented readers.  In deference to your sensibilities, we have placed this picture below the jump.  Reader beware.

Thursday: Indian potato and green pea stew

Simple potato and green pea stew (aloo hari matar foogath)

We got this pleasant recipe from Yamuna Devi's book The Art of Indian Vegetarian Cooking. She says this dish is popular throughout north India, where the consistency can vary from relatively dry - as ours was - to thinner and more stew-like.

Sunday dinner: Protein, starch, veg

Monkfish with grainy mustard, potatoes roasted with rosemary, and mesclun.

This is a pretty standard fish-and-potatoes meal for us, but we've used the dried rosemary that we specially ordered from our CSA this winter.

Sunday: Stew Night

Saffron-cod stew with 7-grain toast.

We were looking for a recipe to replicate the fish stews that we enjoyed at Portuguese restaurants when were living in the Cambridge/Somerville area, and we found this take on the classic cod-and-potatoes combination. Unlike New England-style chowder, this stew contains no dairy. Instead, it is flavored with saffron, garlic, and onion. We didn't have leeks, prawns, or parsley, and we substituted homemade veggie stock for the fish stock.

Although this stew was pleasant and comforting, it wasn't as similar to those Portuguese stews as we had been hoping. The saffron flavor was perhaps a bit too subtle - we would definitely increase the quantity of saffron if we were to make this recipe again.

Sunday dinner: It's CHOWDA! Say it right!!

Hake chowder with homemade biscuits.

This was our first time making chowder - and quite a success. Chowder always seemed to us to be one of those meals that can only be had at a restaurant. But of course it's been a staple in the Northeast for years in average homes. After making it, we can see why: there's no easier or more practical winter meal than a mix of long-storing potatoes, fresh-caught winter fish, and a little dairy.

In this recipe the fillet gets chopped before being added, but as it cooks the pieces fall apart, giving the chowder that characteristic creamy texture. (In fact, this recipe actually contains no cream - only milk.) We'd be remiss if we didn't mention that this is of course a New England-style chowder, not a Manhattan or Rhode Island-style, which are tomato-based. The long and sordid history of the battle between these two chowder factions is featured extensively in The Food of a Younger Land, and we highly recommend the book to anyone invested in the question.

Faithful readers might notice that these biscuits look a little different from those we made only a short while ago - these are made mostly with whole wheat pastry flour, with only a little half-white bread flour added. Using pastry flour, which has a much lower protein content, changed the texture of the biscuits markedly: they had a much finer crumb and denser consistency.

In the past we always used to use "all-purpose" flour, which has a medium protein content and is therefore pretty versatile. But lately we've discovered the wonders of fresh-milled local bread and pastry flours, which frankly taste a lot better. We've found there's a learning curve involved because the two types of flour act differently in recipes; to cook with them, you need to get a sense of when to use each one and how to adapt recipes to cope with the higher or lower protein content. For example, bread flour can hold a lot more moisture than pastry flour, so to get a similar batter you might need to add a lot more milk or water when using bread flour.

(And by the way, yes, you DO have to say "chowda.")

Friday: Kala Chana

Black chickpea-potato curry, served with watercress and garlic cucumber pickles.

Black chickpeas (aka kala chana) are relatives of the usual tan-colored variety, but they are a bit smaller and have more texture, along with a subtly more interesting flavor. In this dish they are cooked with potatoes in a sauce that starts with a base of pureed ginger-garlic-onion paste. They are seasoned with asafoetida, some spices, and several tablespoons of either tamarind paste or lemon juice. Here, we've served them with pickles. This is actually the way legume dishes are usually served in many parts of India, although the pickle would likely be something other than cucumber - perhaps lemon, watermelon rind, cauliflower, carrot, etc.

Christmas Dinner 3: Return of the Brisket

Philadelphia Christmas 2009, clockwise from top: beef brisket, garlic-sauteed chard, butternut squash with mustard seeds, Lukas's cabbage, spinach-mushroom kugel, and mashed potatoes with gravy.

Well, you all KNEW we had left the door open to a sequel, didn't you?

We helped Lizz's parents with Christmas dinner in Philadelphia. They were mainly responsible for the brisket, cooked with 36 cloves of garlic (from the Gefilte Variations cookbook), and the mashed potatoes. You'd think we'd have tired of kugel by now, but we really liked this variation in which we swapped out the leeks for fresh wilted spinach. The squash recipe was a particularly nice addition to this meal since it is cooked with some brown sugar and is very sweet - it filled the spot typically occupied by something like a sweet potato casserole. (Which comes with marshmallows, if you are in Ohio. Which we luckily are not.)

Dessert was once again a couple of lovely pies made by Lizz's dad: one made with real mincemeat, and one pecan.



Merry Christmas everyone!

Christmas Dinner 2: The Kugel Strikes Back

Clockwise, starting at top: cornbread, cranberry-beet sauce, quick-pickled collards, mushroom-leek kugel, mashed potatoes, gingered collards, and turnips in mustard sauce.

This was the sequel to last week's Christmas dinner. Like all good sequels, it is primarily derivative of the first dinner, but with a few new twists. In addition to the gingered collards, we made a quick pickle (more or less this, but without the pineapple). We also substituted Tokyo turnips in mustard sauce for the red cabbage. In this dish, the turnips are fried until lightly browned, braised in stock, and finally tossed in a thickened mustard-stock sauce.

And with that, we put Christmas dinner 2009 to a rest...or did we??

Christmas Dinner 1

Clockwise from top: mushroom-leek kugel, gingered collard greens with fried cashews, cranberry sauce, cornbread, Lukas's red cabbage, and mashed potatoes.

We had a few friends over for an early Christmas dinner at our apartment, the first of two. (When you have a small apartment, it takes multiple Christmas dinners to accommodate all your friends. We suppose there are worse problems to have.) Many of the dishes above are familiar holiday fixtures, but a few deserve further comment.

Faithful readers will remember the pumpkin kugel that we made at Thanksgiving. The mushroom-leek kugel above was a variation in which we substituted sauteed leeks and mushrooms for the pumpkin puree and added two types of soft cheese, ricotta and fromage blanc. Finally, thyme and chopped sage were mixed in. We found this semi-original creation more interesting than the pumpkin version.

Lukas's cabbage is a recipe given to us by a former roommate. It's sort of a sweet-and-sour quick pickle of red cabbage. The cabbage is cooked with green apple, red onion, a little sugar, and a lot of balsamic vinegar.

Friday: Beauty and the Beast

Potato, celeriac and green onion gratin.

For this casserole-type dish, thin slices of celeriac and potato were layered with Jarlsberg cheese, sprinkled with chopped green onion, moistened with sherry and vegetable broth, and baked until everything was soft.

Nobody would accuse celeriac of being an attractive vegetable, but they sure are delicious once they're peeled and cooked:



Proving that looks aren't everything, they mixed it up with these beautiful purple potatoes:

Tuesday: Aloo gobi chaat

Aloo gobi chaat.

We've already blogged about chaat - an Indian snack food that can serve as a quick weeknight dinner. This was more or less a reprise of our previous chaat, but with the substitution of a small head of purple cauliflower for the tomatoes (no longer in season, sadly).

To save time, we once again used pre-cooked canned chickpeas instead of dried black or green chickpeas. Since the taste of canned chickpeas leaves something to be desired, we followed Madhur Jaffrey's method for quickly improving their flavor: drain and rise the chickpeas, then simmer for five to ten minutes in water to cover with whole spices (a bay leaf, cumin, coriander, cloves, or whatever you like) in a tea strainer or tied up in a little cheesecloth sachet. Although we don't use this technique every single time that we use canned chickpeas, it can really make a difference for dishes like chaat where the chickpeas are to be eaten whole without any additional cooking.

Saturday: The "C" word

Celeriac-pink potato mash on field mustard bed with roasted pumpkin seeds.

You might notice one very common grocery store vegetable which is missing from our list of tags at right...celery. Lizz has hated celery passionately for as long as she can remember, so it is basically banned from our house. We have, however, enacted a celeriac amnesty policy.

What is celeriac, you ask? Well, it's otherwise known as "celery root." It is in fact a variety of celery grown for its globe-shaped, knobby underground root rather than the stalk, and it is the default form of celery in some countries, including France. The taste is celery-esque, but milder and a bit earthier, and it has a uniform fine texture similar to that of kohlrabi - none of the watery stringiness of stalk celery.

This is a dairy-free mash of celeriac and potatoes. Both vegetables are peeled and cut into chunks, then boiled for 25 minutes until soft. Finally they're mashed with just a little added oil. We sauteed a couple bunches of wild field mustard in olive oil and used them as a bed; they provided a nice sharp contrast.

Thursday: "Hash-browns," Indian style

Indian potatoes with whole spices and sesame seed.

We'd actually both eaten dinner earlier this evening, but decided to make this little potato curry as a late-night snack. We needed to use up the remaining German Butterball potatoes. The Adirondack pinks were thrown in there for variety.

This recipe is a pretty basic curry, but the results are delicious: the potatoes are boiled whole and then cubed; then a series of spices are added to hot oil (asafoetida, fenugreek, black mustard seed, cumin), followed by a lot of white sesame seed and a little powdered turmeric. The potatoes are added and fried for about ten minutes total, adding a little amchur with salt and pepper halfway through.

Most of the curries we make don't involve sesame, but its flavor really added a richness to this dish and made it seem more substantial.

Sunday: Wintry comfort food

Classic leek and potato soup.

We make this at least once a year; it's one of Giselle's favorite winter comfort foods. Chopped-up leek and potato are simply sauteed in some oil; then broth is added and it all simmers for under a half hour. Serve with crusty bread.

Saturday dinner: Broccoli rabe with Indian flavors

Indian broccoli rabe with tomato-flavored masoor dal and basmati rice.

This Mahanandi broccoli rabe recipe pairs the bitter greens with potato and peas - a common treatment of vegetables with a bite in Indian cooking. It makes sense: the potato adds starch and moderates the bitterness, and the peas add bursts of sweetness.

For a side dish, we made a little masoor dal. Masoor is a light pink legume when dry, though as it cooks it turns a pleasant warm orange. Because it is shelled it cooks very quickly - as little as fifteen minutes - so it can serve as a convenient quick protein for a vegetable-based meal.

Wednesday: Om gnom gnom

Whole-wheat purple potato gnocchi with heirloom tomato sauce and sauteed squash blossoms.

This was a bit of a fuss for a weeknight meal, but the results were worth it. We haven't made gnocchi from scratch for probably four years now, so it was about time. They aren't actually technically difficult to make: you just steam potatoes to soft, then mix with flour and one egg and knead till you have a dough. You then roll out the dough and cut into small lengths; finally you drop each piece (gnoccho?...) into boiling water and let it cook until it floats to the top, at which point you fish it out. So, as you may guess from the above, the real problem with them is that they're a bit time-consuming. (Plus you still need to make a sauce to go with them, after all that!)

This is also the first time we've used squash blossoms in anything but our standard fried blossom recipe. They were tasty this way - soft and zucchini-like in flavor.

Wednesday: Mid-week masala

Veggie masala with coconut milk and lemongrass, served over basmati rice.

We adapted this recipe from an okra masala in a very crunchy Asian vegan cookbook - okra may be done for the year, since we couldn't find it at the market this week, but we had plenty of broccoli Romanesco left over. We added potato to the recipe, as well, since we had some fingerlings lying around. Back by popular demand, special guest chef Laura (not pictured) assisted with prep.

This is only our second time cooking with lemongrass. It smelled amazingly potent and fresh:



The main flavors in this recipe are the large amount of fresh ginger and lemongrass sauteed at the start, and the can of coconut milk added at the very end, which creates a thick, creamy sauce. We also adapted it a bit by adding some spices we thought would mesh well - a small amount of fenugreek and mustard seed, and a bit of turmeric and cayenne.

Observant readers might note that peas are NOT in fact in season - we confess, we used frozen peas, and in fact we almost always do when peas factor into our cooking. Fresh peas are delightful, but their season is very short, and let's be honest, they're kind of a pain to shell. Frozen peas are one of the few veggies whose quality is quite acceptable. In fact, peas flash-frozen at the right point of ripeness can be just as good as fresh peas that are a bit past their prime.

Thursday: North Indian cauliflower and potato

Cauliflower and potatoes cooked with fenugreek and fennel seeds.

This recipe from Madhur Jaffrey's World of the East is apparently a popular North Indian dish. It's commonly served with paratha, but due to time constraints we had to substitute sourdough bread from the freezer.

A note on terminology: some people might call a dish like this "curried" cauliflower and potatoes. The truth is, there isn't really such thing as "curry" - Indian dishes use a great variety of different spices in combinations that vary by season, region and recipe. Generic "curry powders" might include a few of the most common spices - turmeric, coriander, cumin and cayenne - but this doesn't begin to capture the subtlety that can be created by varying types and amounts of spices, and adding them at different stages of the cooking process.

Ironically, a common flavoring in many south Indian regional cuisines is the "curry leaf" - which bears no relationship to commercial curry powders, but does impart its own complex flavor to certain dishes.